Life after You
by hrewannabe
Summary: Ira knelt on the floor of the apartment and cried with the older Bone Gnawer over their loss. A WtA collection of shorts following a young Bone Gnawer's path on recovery and learning to live with loss.
1. The News

There was nothing but silence in the apartment.

Her heart was pounding.

Tessa the stern but sweet Bone Gnawer had come back that morning alone.

There was no Vieno 'creeping' into the apartment with some snack or small gift to apologize for being out late.

There was no hushing noises from Tessa to calm Vieno, to tell him to quiet, that "shh, Ira might still be sleeping."

She had come back into the apartment dirty and with red eyes, Vieno's keys and satchel clinched in her hands.

Tessa had stood in the doorway gazing but not really seeing. Vieno never bounded into the room behind her. Ira waited for him to come bounding in, or limping. Eyes and lips wide in happiness, but he never came. She looked at Tessa and then the door and then moved towards the older Bone Gnawer and she seemed to startle back to life and turned to close the door. Tessa dropped the keys and the bag and grabbed Ira's hands moving her to the couch.

"Where's Vieno?"

Her heart was sinking like a ship.

Tessa had sat her on the couch and had knelt in the floor in front of her. Her hair a dark tangled mess damp and wind tossed and dirty. Ira in her sweater and pajama pants had felt oddly out of place at that moment.

"I'm sorry." It seemed to be the only thing able to pass the older woman's lips that night. "I'm so sorry."

It felt like the world was closing in.

Ira had gazed at Tessa's hands. Her hands had been just a dirty as the rest of her, under her nails was blood. Dried a dark red, some of it flecked on her fingertips.

"I'm sorry" Tessa had breathed out like she was dying. Like she was on the verge of a panic attack. Like she was spiraling down the Black Spiral without someone to pull her back up.

Ira shifted her gaze to look behind Tessa and gazed at the wall. She couldn't stand in that moment to have looked at the older woman's face and see the anguish gripping her, to see how the tears had started to fall again. Ira gazed past her shoulder at the wall. Ira's eyes had latched onto a photo of Vieno and a group of five people wearing green shirts.

"I'm so sorry Ira, this wasn't supposed to happen" Tessa breathed and Ira had felt the same nausea roll in her stomach as that one time. Except she couldn't remember exactly what that time was anymore. "He wasn't supposed to go out this way, Tessa sobs, her hands grasping Ira's. "I should have been there!" Tessa had seemed to wail out.

Her heart seemed to stop.

"Where's Vieno? Tessa? Tessa?" Ira had felt the panic rising up like a storm cloud. Ira had moved her gaze back to Tessa, hands moved to grasp her shoulders. Tessa's too big hands covered her face as she cried out "I'm sorry" and "gone, he's gone."

She stared.

Time seemed to stop, and the blood had rushed in her ears.

Ira didn't want to believe that this was happening again.

They'd barely had more than three weeks together.

A pack.

A family.

A home.

 _gone_

Her hands started to shake and, and Ira had leaned over, curling in on herself and keened. Her eyes had pressed tight together, hot tears started to leak out. "Not again" She wailed and Tessa drew her into her lap and curled around her. Both of the Bone gnawers sat on the floor gripped tight and keened for the loss of the young man who had lived with them. They mourned together and a heavy weight settled on their shoulders.

Across the room, by the door the satchel vibrated for a few minutes and then stopped.


	2. Chapter 2

Her heart was racing, pounding in her chest like a jack rabbit being chased.

She had just found a new home. Sure it was with…had been with a silly, sweet Child of Gaia and a stern but kind Bone Gnawer but it was a home. It was more home than before her change or that time with the crow, but would this still be home now. Will everything change the way it did last time she thought looking at the pale green walls of her room, a small picture frame of herself, Tessa and Vieno stood on the nightstand beside her bed, along with a small laptop that Vieno had given her. Would they get to stay here still? Who exactly owned the apartment was it Vieno or Tessa's? Had anyone told Lee-Ann yet? Ira paced her room fingers trailing along the forest green comforter. Mind racing. Only four months. Barely five. Gone, like her grandparents and parents. Like Bryan, only she doesn't really remember Bryan so well anymore. Only that he was important and gone, dead like Vieno.

It seemed like everyone was leaving and all in a quick succession. First her parents in the horrible accident up north, where a large animal had run out onto the road and caused their car to crash and Ira's sudden move down south to Virginia. Then her grandparents after she got taken, she had learned that from the crow man. Ira doesn't really remember anything about being taken or what happened she just knows that Vieno had treaded lightly on the subject and the rest of the caern did so as well when she would come near. Bryan died too, but Ira has a hard time remembering who he was, only that he had been scared. Scared, but brave enough to have gone instead of her. Gone to where Ira wonders as she opens the door to her room, she doesn't remember. All she knows is that the world loves tugging the rug out from under her feet.


	3. The Kitchen - A few days later

Her blood pounded in her ears.

Ira wandered around the kitchen taking in the way it had changed, surprised at the difference a few days could make. The yellow paint looked faded and dull, as if the bright color and energy it had once provided had slunk out the door with Vieno's death. The pictures on the refrigerator looked the same, but held a sad air about them. Freckled faces staring out from photographs, and those of people from the caern that Ira recognized and even one of herself and Lee-Ann. The list of phone numbers that Vieno had put up that night for emergences still pasted onto the refrigerator and the little wolf and owl magnets he had received in a package along with the letters and moon shapes still clung onto the white surface. The soft footsteps of Tessa reached Ira's ears as the older Bone Gnawer slipped into the room.

The sound of the coffee machine starting to whirl to life and the small sound of a sigh filled the air. Ira turned to look at Tessa, watching the way the older woman seemed to droop against the counter.

"Have you had breakfast yet?"

"No"

"I'll get on it"

Ira watches, eyes taking in everything she can as Tessa starts to move around the small open kitchen pulling out three bowls and cups before realizing her mistakes and stilling. Ira gently grabbed her hands, and pushed her into the odd stool Vieno had kept in the corner. The stool tilted a bit to the left as Tessa sat down. Ira moved to the bowls and cups putting away Vieno's slowly, head twisting at the last moment to see if maybe, just maybe, he'll come bleary eyed through the door frame before shutting the cabinet door.

He doesn't.

She rummages through the cabinets, his cabinets to find the cereal, hands almost pulling out his weird box of Golden Puffs before leaving the box there and pulling out the kind that she eats with Tessa and fixing their bowls. Ira sighs when she hears a small sob come from where she left Tessa sitting on the stool.

He won't ever come through the kitchen doorway again, or make weird pancakes, or offer food to her and Lee-Ann and Rahim when they come to study homework. Ira's eyes start to water, and she blinks heavily. She can't let her emotions come over her like this, she has to be strong.

'Now's not the time' she thinks to herself before pouring her orange juice into glass.

'Now's not the time."


	4. His Bedroom

Her skin crawled.

She couldn't pass the door of his room without ducking her head. Vieno had left the door cracked open, and neither Tessa nor Ira had the heart to close the door. They would shuffle by it, eyes avoiding the way the lamp he kept had never been turned off, and the way its soft light would fall out the door. At night Ira would skirt around it, afraid to get to close and remember.

Still it wasn't something that she could have avoid forever.

She had pushed the door open, a few days later when the sun was setting, finally stepping into the light the lamp cast out the door. Her eyes took in the room. The soft yellow-green walls lined with pictures and a single bookcase. Piles of books littered the room, spilling out from the bookcase creating its own kind of landscape. Ira shuffled across the room careful not to disturb the stacks to turn off the lamp.

She tried not to notice the way the small bed's yellow comforter was half-heartedly pulled across the bed or the way the soft green blanket was pooled at the foot of the bed. It was as though he had just gotten up and ran out of the room to brush his teeth. Ira shook her head, and sneezed.

The soft sugary smell of Vieno's scent filled the room, curling around the sheets and the bookcase, and the soft looking chair shoved in the corner where even more books were piled. Here in his bedroom his scent was still strong and unmuddled. Ira drifted from where she had gone to switch of the lamp to gaze at the bookcase and the journals stacked on them and the wide variety of books. Fingers trailing across the books on the shelves when she heard Tessa calling her name.

She paused.

Glanced around the room one last time, walked over to the light and hesitated for a brief second.

Her fingers rested on the knob, and then the room was swept in darkness.


	5. The Brother

The knocking on the door persisted.

At first a few simple raps but now

A hard fast tempo that echoed around the apartment waking Ira from her nap.

She had started the nap when she had gotten home from school, feet dragging on the pavement until she reached the apartment and pounded up the stairs. The Bone Gnawer had curled up in one of the soft fuzzy blankets that Vieno had left out of habit draped across the back of the couch in the living room, a blanket he would now never come back to retrieve. At first she had thought that the knocking was nothing, just a sound from one of the apartments below, but the sound had persisted. Ira uncurled from her position, back stretching and the soft red blanket drifted to pile around her waist before swing her legs onto the floor and leaving the blanket puddled there on the soft couch. The knocking was defiantly real and coming from their door.

As she passed through the main living space she dimly registered Vieno's satchel still laying where Tessa had left it that first night. Sometimes the apartment felt like a tomb, perfectly preserved and waiting for Vieno to walk through the door. As Ira neared the door she heard muffled muttering and curses coming through the wood. Peering through the peep hole see saw freckles and dark reddish-brown hair. The tall teen unlocked the bolt and pulled the door open a tad, the chain on the door keeping it from opening to wide jingled.

"What do you want?"

"Who are you!" came the angry response from the tall man standing on the other side.

"I live here, what do you want"

"Where's my brother? I heard something happened" and the man's worried freckled features and voice clicked with the image Vieno had painted of his brother. Tall,, muscular, and loud with a few freckles and a mop of curls.

Ira stilled and thought. She wasn't the one in charge, she was still a cub in rank and knowledge. She wasn't an alpha or a beta and she didn't even have a pack yet. Well, technically she did have a pack but that's another thing. She paused, 'what would Tessa or Vieno do' she thought to herself. 'Oh! Introductions.'

"Name?"

"Egil Trancey, Child of Gaia, Ahroun. Now let me in, is he here?!"

Ira's knees felt weak. He didn't know

He didn't know about his brother.


	6. The News repeated

Ira had sat in her bedroom, door cracked so as to hear what was going on.

Egil had come in and had gazed around, asking where his brother was, if he was in the hospital or at the cearn if he wasn't here. Ira had just stared and then told him to wait for Tessa. Tessa had come home to see the tall man bristling and nervously bouncing his leg and had promptly shooed Ira out of the room.

So now she sat waiting to hear.

There was muffled shouting from the living room drifting down the hallway into her room. Words rolled in like thunder and she could barely hear the quiet voice of Tessa seeping through the walls. Trying to explain what had happened. Ira herself didn't really understand what had happened, Tessa wouldn't say anything except that it was a dual pack mission that had gone wrong. That it was an accident that no one could have seen coming. That Tessa herself hadn't even been there, instead she had been speaking with their totem and gaining advice about being a beta. Tessa hadn't even let Ira go to the cearn yet. But now she was hearing more then she had known. She heard snips about a dagger, and ancient slumbering spirits, and a mage twisted with the want of power. Ira wonders how much Vieno would have enjoyed telling a story like the one she was hearing through the walls right now if he had lived.


	7. The Satchel or Reverance

Sighs trailed from her lips like prayers.

The living room felt like death now, too quiet. Except for when Egil was there. His large form taking up room in a way Vieno never did. He had rifled around Vieno's bedroom for what seemed like a whole day, and then trailed through the house like a ghost. Today it seemed like he had moved to the kitchen and the living room. Ira had watched him pace in the small kitchen, stopping to peer at the pictures on the fridge and open and close the cabinet doors and mess with the stool in the corner. She watched all this from her perch on the couch with her Spanish homework spread out in front of her. Now she watched him approach the living room. Watched the way his shoulders tensed and then dropped when he noticed she was watching. Watched him pause when he noticed Vieno's satchel laying near the door to the hallway.

His loud voice was soft now.

"is that…was that his bag?"

Ira nodded watching him move almost reverently to pick up the bag. He stood there awkwardly clutching it while fiddling with the zippers to open the bag. He maneuvered his way onto the floor and started to spread out the items. He pulled out Vieno's phone first and watched it turn on only to blink and turn off, the battery dead. He pulled out a wallet which he flipped through only to pull out what looked like two old worn photos and a drivers license. His large hands held them with a softness they looked like they could possess, they curled protectively around the objects. Ira hummed, and watched the Ahroun's head swivel to look at her.

""Why are you even here still?" he barked out, face drawn tight and eyes starting to grow wet. He looks Ira straight in the eye, holding her gaze as if they were locked in a staring contest and both six years old.

"I've got nowhere to go, besides Vieno told me I could stay here. I'm a charge of his pack." Ira sniffed out and turned her head away waiting for the man to turn back to his self-imposed task.

The Ahroun sighed and ruffled through the bag a bit more pulling out a small notebook and flipping through it. He stops at certain pages and trails his fingers softly along the page barely touching whatever is written. Ira watches and wonders.

"That sounds like him, too nice for his own good, picking up strays where ever he walks" bites out Egil still looking at the notebook. It's closed now, but his fingers are a freckled white at the knuckles from where he's gripping the object.

Eyes squinted Ira watched him as he gently its the notebook down, and riffles through the bag again pulling out what looked like a crystal rock, and a small wooden token with a glyph carved into its smooth surface. He sits them to the side and continues to pull out the bags continents. His eyes a little red, hair mused from running his large hands through them.

"'You can cry you know' Ira thinks watching Egil rub his eyes.


	8. The Ride

"You can cry you know, Ahrouns can cry too" Ira told the Ahroun watching him from her spot in the passenger seat.

"I don't know who told you that, but Ahrouns don't cry, not over a good death"

"You can still cry over missing them"

"stop telling me these things!"

"Your brother told me that you know, are you saying he's wrong?"

"No."

And she watched the way the older man ran a hand through his hair in frustration before placing it back on the wheel. She studied his face, noticed the way he was tanner than Vieno had been, the way his eyelashes curled and how his brown eyes were almost the same shade that Vieno's had been. Ira sighed and shifted her feet and her book bag.

It was hard to believe that the older man fit in his car, she mused as she watched his hands on the while. She thought he would have had a truck like Vieno, but instead she had watched him that morning pretzel himself into the ridiculously small car and turn on a soft cd full of country music.

Ira had wrinkled her nose in disgust at the first few notes. Vieno had never...

She missed the smaller clumsier Child of Gaia and how early morning rides to school had been filled with loud rambling tales about Gaia and his home caern and his fierce mother with her fangs barred. She missed riding in Vieno's low slung truck that was always in need of a repair, or a new radio system or just plainly a new car. She missed the smell of the car, of wet dog and musty paper and the smell of Vieno's shampoo.

She missed him.

Ira watched the Egil's car pull up to the school and she clambered out.

She didn't wave goodbye to him, or speak and he didn't offer any words either.


End file.
